Delhi, India
Our first Indian breakfast provided one or two new delicacies but mindful of a long day ahead, and with loo-paper carefully packed into the backpack, we erred on the side of caution and skipped the scariest-looking morsels.
Bang on time our guide for the day - Harsh - arrived, along with his driver and an air-conditioned SUV to do battle with Delhi's traffic. With an early-morning fog deciding to stick around for most of the day, we decided that the hazy glow was merely atmospheric conditions rather than the choking fumes of pollution.
After a discussion about what we were due to see during which Harsh made clear the whole day would be "jampacked" and there would be "no time" to see Pura Quilana (a ruined district I wanted to check out), we sailed out of the relatively chi-chi New Delhi suburb where our hotel lay, surrounded by embassies, to venture north into the bustling heart of Old Delhi.
Our first stop was Lal Quila, or the Red Fort. An enormous palace which was once the seat of Mughal government, it is now a calm oasis of stunning architecture; part Versailles, part Istanbul's Topkapi palace. From there, Harsh hailed a couple of bicycle rickshaws and we were taken on a bumpy but fabulous spin through the Hindi backstreets of Chandni Chowk, past street stalls and sweetshops, restaurants and dwellings - all tattered rags and linen drying, dirty dogs lying in the dust and a riot of smells and colours.
When we finally came to a halt in the Muslim district outside Jama Masjid, the largest mosque in Asia which can accommodate over 25,000 people, Harsh admonished us for not tipping the rickshaw driver enough. Suitably chastened I dug deep to reward the guardian of footwear at the mosque who obviously thought his prayers had been answered when Coman and I slipped off our shoes and slipped him a fistful of rupees. Allah is great indeed. Altho even Allah himself couldn't cover Coman's shame at his big toe sticking straight out of his sock. I'll be darned, etc etc...
From there a whistle-stop visit to Rajghat, the site of Gandhi's cremation where a memorial fire still burns, was followed by a visit to a spectacular Hindu temple dedicated to Lakshmi and Narayan. In front of their statues an old lady gave us sticky candied fruit, a calorie-busting sacrament, before we set off to explore.
Alcoves galore had shrines to the likes of Ganesh, Shiva, Hanuman and Vishnu but cameras were forbidden. Disturbed by the lack of our pictorial record (after all, if there's not a bloody great photo of it, then what's the point?! *ahem*) I decided to approach a street vendor purveying the finest postcards of the interior. Or not as the case may be. Badly blurred and reprinted by a five year old I politely declined only to be pursued into our waiting vehicle. In my haste to escape the bad-Xeroxing con merchant I banged my head jumping in through the door and saw more stars in the next 10 seconds than had been painted on the entire temple ceiling.
Next stop was a "Kashmiri handicraft centre, where all the finest examples of their culture can be seen". Oh, Harsh you forked-tongue smoothie. Yep, it was a carpet shop run by Khalid, a man whose genetic resemblance to Harsh was startling.
After a cinnamon, saffron, cardamom and honey tea (very nice indeed) rug after rug was unveiled before us. On and on it went, and we were mightily tempted. But not knowing the dimensions of our new living room-to-be, nor having £1500 spare, meant we eventually extricated ourselves after nearly an hour, light-headed with hunger (mild concussion notwithstanding) but fortunately not lighter on the wallet.
Khalid and Harsh were very disappointed. I pointed out that as there was "no time" in our "jampacked" schedule to see Pura Quilana I was very surprised that we could spare an hour looking at carpets. Harsh kindly informed us that it had in fact been our lunch break. Three cups of sweet tea and a digestive. Hmmmmm.
Back to the car. Silence.
Next stop was the Presidential Palace. Wow that's big. Yes we will take a photo. No, we'll take our time. Thank you very much. Oh, are we now running late on the timetable? Tough, we want to see everything that it says on the schedule. Which annoyingly we had left back in the hotel. But no worries, I'd studied it enough for us not to be short-changed.
And there was no way we were going to miss Humayun's Tomb. And by Krishna, it was worth the price of admission. Originally built by Shah Jahan's great grandmother as a mausoleum to her dead husband, the emperor Humayun, it provided the blueprint for Shah Jahan's most famous creation, the Taj Mahal (the monument, not our hotel). Built out of sandstone, it's a red version of its more famous descendent, and stunningly beautiful. We lingered just long enough for Harsh to be nervous about getting back for his tea.
Two final stops, both negotiating Delhi's rush hour traffic as the sun started to set, saw us taking in the delights of the Bahai Temple, which is shaped like a lotus flower but more closely resembles Sydney Opera House, and then Qubt Minar, the original site of the first city of Delhi dating back over 3,000 years and with a big old minaret plonked on it from the Islamic conquest some 2,000 years later.
Finally we returned to the hotel and bade goodbye to our (mostly) faithful guide.
